Because commonsense knowledge differs
in each culture, misunderstandings frequently occur. Since
differences can be subtle, there has been little work in trying to
detect places in text where cultural differences might arise. We
explicitly represent
commonsense knowledge of each culture in
separate knowledge bases. By analyzing the text, we can find the
differences between each culture's knowledge concerning the subject
of the text. For example, given an invitation to a party, the system
is able to infer that in an American cultural context, hip-hop
dancing might be expected, but in a Mexican context, salsa dancing
might be the norm. We are building an e-mail client that while
watching the user's typing, suggests knowledge from multiple
cultures that might be relevant.